I am wondering what catatonia feels like for you, if you don't mind answering. Hope you are doing well and once again wanted to tell you how important your voice is on this site.
heheh thank you, nice to see u again
gonna talk about general info about autistic catatonia and personal experiences. all the non-personal experience info are from book catatonia, shutdown, and breakdown in autism by dr amitta shah, i very much not far in book but will summarize what i read so far.
so. experience autistic catatonia. which can look different from classic acute & severe catatonia in disorders like schizophrenia (preface/p. 17). so can't speak about that kind of catatonia. but personally also have apraxia and dissociation/dissociate from body, so have hard time separate catatonia experiences from apraxia from dissociation sometimes.
types of catatonia in autism outlined by dr shah (p19-25)
1. chronic catatonia & catatonia-type deterioration and breakdown
change & deteriorate in ability to make voluntary movements & activities, to point where affect daily functioning, independence, behavior, quality of life, etc.
also occur w regression of skill & independence
may not show classic signs of acute catatonia
2. acute catatonia (general)
aka the classic signs of catatonia
temporary shutdown of social interaction & communication during acute stress & get back to normal after stress pass
4. episodic/lifelong catatonia-type difficulties
not deterioration/breakdown but have chronic or episodic difficulty start movement & activities
not necessarily diagnostic of autistic catatonia especially if don't have deterioration or affect independence
so personally. when i say autistic catatonia, mean #1, chronic catatonia. have trouble voluntarily control own movements and also deteriorate so much.
don't really mean #3. although also experience it sometimes. autistic community call it "autistic shutdown" more and like that more because distinguish from chronic autistic catatonia.
primary difficulties & manifestations of autistic catatonia (p29)
increased slowness (in walking, response, self-care, etc)
movement difficulties (diffcult initiate, freezing & getting stuck, hesitations, difficulty crossing thresholds, difficulty stopping movement, may affect speech & eating)
passivity & apparent lack of motivation
fluctuation of difficulty
personally pretty much experience all of them, except for maybe #6 posturing and #8 catatonic excitement? (also don't have a lot of trouble cross threshold like go through door and such), or at least only very mild forms of 6 & 8.
personally. get stuck a lot. have trouble start thing, from get out bed to brush teeth to do homework etc, all the big and small things. sometimes want to say thing and can't get body to say thing. may freeze mid action, like typing this post, do it very slowly because freeze in between every few words. sometimes mid doing things, just start staring and freeze in the position i hold.
biggest way to describe is just. get stuck all the time. stuck in head. freeze. body inclined to stay still, have really hard time control. so many times stay in head and stim inside head when can't stim with body because can't control body.
literally like newton's first law!!!!! objects at rest will stay at rest, object in motion will stay in motion (unless acted upon by an external force aka in this situation prompts).
need a lot of prompts. verbal or even physical prompts from other people. habit charts and behavior charts and phone reminders and even alarms don't work. need someone prompt.
autistic catatonia + communication difficulties mixed together means that rarely initiate conversation (either no interest or catatonia can't), need specific concrete questions, can't answer general vague big questions. literal stuck when asked big vague questions. sometimes stop talking/freeze when finish answering the explicit part of the question bare minimum and physically cannot continue elaborate unless someone ask another follow up question for prompt (other times don't recognize need to say more but that's more autism communication differences).
somedays good days and body more unlocked. many many many days body stuck.